NXP ‘sharpens’ mcu range

Geoff Lees, general manager of NXP's microcontroller product line, said the 32bit sector is one of the fastest growing markets at the moment. "NXP has invested a lot in growing its 32bit range in the last couple of years. BlueStreak has been one of the pacesetters in this market and we were quite surprised when Sharp said it wanted to leave the sector, so we moved quickly." The acquisition expands NXP's 32bit mcu range to 50 products, but the important element is that 11 of these have lcd controllers – an area where NXP was previously weak. Lees noted: "It's not so much filling a hole as accelerating what we had already started. The number of tft interfaces today takes quite a lot of learning and Sharp had already made a lot of progress in developing support. The attraction is gettting an applications group with five years experience in house." Lees expects the transition to be relatively smooth. "One of the things that appealed is we don't have to change our manufacturing flow," he concluded.